The AI Note Taking Powerhouse - Obsidian

Introduction

Today we're going to be talking about knowledge bases and AI—effectively, the ability for you to take your personal notes and information and give that to an AI in a way that it can assist you. You can ask questions about the notes you've taken in the past, help organize those notes in novel and interesting ways, and just help kind of be organized. I'm a big user of Obsidian, and that's what we're going to be using today. You could use a lot of different note-taking systems, but I think Obsidian is great largely because it relies on files over using an application.

This idea is encapsulated in a post by Obsidian CEO, Steph Ango. When an application contains all the data you care about, you rely on that application for your interface and access to that data. The nice thing about a tool like Obsidian is it saves everything as raw files, allowing you to access and manipulate those files independently of the application itself. If you want to shift platforms or change tools, you have the freedom to do so.

Introduction to Obsidian

There are many great features of Obsidian, and we're going to discuss a few key ones here:

Linking and Tags

One of the strongest features of Obsidian is its linking and tagging system. For instance, you can link to all AI-related posts you've made and easily search for them. You can also tag notes to categorize them further. When you click on a tag, it shows all notes containing that tag, providing a powerful way to navigate your knowledge base.

Smart Connections Plugin

To enhance Obsidian's capability with AI, we can use the "Smart Connections" plugin. This plugin allows you to turn on community plugins and search for the most similar notes to the one you have open using embedding models. This setup creates a system for retrieving and generating content based on your own notes. You can chat with your notes and get detailed responses that are well-contextualized.

Text Generator Plugin

Another useful plugin is the "Text Generator" plugin. This plugin supports multiple providers and allows you to generate text based on prompts you provide. You can configure it to present generated text in a blockquote for clarity, making it easy to differentiate from your manually written notes.

Excalidraw Plugin

Finally, the "Excalidraw" plugin allows you to create quick mockups and wireframes in your notes. You can even generate code from these wireframes. By installing the script from Excal AI, you can highlight text and generate code based on the mockups, which is a great feature for designing and prototyping interfaces.

Additional Plugins

There are many other plugins that make Obsidian even more powerful:

• Note Refactor: Helps to extract snippets from long notes.
• Language Tool: Functions like Grammarly for Obsidian.
• Matter: Collects highlights from articles and stores them in Obsidian.
• Data View: Creates complex tables and sortable views within notes.
• Book Server: Integrates Goodreads data into Obsidian.

Conclusion

Obsidian combined with AI provides an unparalleled note-taking experience. It offers flexibility, strength, and uniqueness without binding you to a specific platform or application. Whether you want to use OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, or explore other options, Obsidian keeps your data accessible and adaptable.

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